Talk:Gatling Blaster
Terminology Quibble and Bolter Casing Huh? I'm not too sure these are errors, so I'll mark them down as just a pair of minor questions. First, the cannon in question is described as both pneumatically (gas-driven) and hydraulically (fluid-driven) driven, which is somewhat conflicting since they're not exactly the same sort of motive transfer. That said, I can see why the Mechanicus would choose pneumatic over hydralic, since you could always scavenge spare gas from bolt round exhaust in some fancy, sci-fi manner. Finding spare hydralic fluid in a vacuum, on the other hand, could be a bit of a poser. Yoinked from Wikipedia to detail differences: ''Advantages of pneumatics'' *''Simplicity of design and control—Machines are easily designed using standard cylinders and other components, and operate via simple on-off control.'' *''Reliability—Pneumatic systems generally have long operating lives and require little maintenance. Because gas is compressible, Equipment is less subject to shock damage. Gas absorbs excessive force, whereas fluid in hydraulics directly transfers force. Compressed gas can be stored, so machines still run for a while if electrical power is lost.'' *''Safety—There is a very low chance of fire compared to hydraulic oil. Machines are usually overload safe.'' ''Advantages of hydraulics'' *''Liquid (as a gas is also a 'fluid') does not absorb any of the supplied energy.'' *''Capable of moving much higher loads and providing much higher forces due to the incompressibility.'' *''The hydraulic working fluid is basically incompressible, leading to a minimum of spring action. When hydraulic fluid flow is stopped, the slightest motion of the load releases the pressure on the load; there is no need to "bleed off" pressurized air to release the pressure on the load.'' The other question (possibly better served on the bolter page itself, but meh) is that has GW made if clear that bolter rounds have a seperate disposable casing (like modern rifle and pistol ammo)? The description of bolter shell construction from the bolter page implies that there's not much of casing, and that casing is mostly or entirely explosive in nature. I understand the concept that bolter rounds are based on is primarily a caseless round concept (a gyrojet concept, but this is not necessarily always caseless), so the idea of a case-return system for a honking big gatling system seems superfluous. -Wulfenbach (talk) 18:29, December 28, 2012 (UTC) Quite frankly, this whole page is nothing but a bunch of 'citation needed' Whoever wrote this did a decent job copy-pasting info from how *conventional, small caliber* gatling guns with single piece ammunition work - but there are no canon sources describing how they function. We're talking a multi-barrel weapon in the 155-240 mm range (just from the FW model scale - depending on which part of the old fluff you hold to they could be even larger). Multi-part rounds using liquid propellant injected and electro-thermal cannon technology (assuming we're copying from real life but still want the muzzle blast and whatnot that is typical for Imperial weapons) is more appropriate for this sort of caliber gun - and it still eliminates any FOD problem from spent casings. Really, I'd go for plasma armature railguns - expect railgun is too 'techy' for the Imperial aesthetic and is now Tau property, even though Tau railguns operate using some sort of gravitic shit instead of electromagnetics. In addition, these guns are not going to be gas operated - not even with a high pressure blower to provide pnuematic power. I man, FFS, the barrel of *one* of them is bigger and heavier than a LeMan Russ. Straight electro-hydraulics or advanced permanent magnet motors to drive (again - if you want to stick to IRL tech - otherwise its some unknown-to-us form of arcanotech). But when you get right down to it, there's no known tech that can make these guns work like they are described in the fluff. An IRL gatling blaster would be the equivalent of a rotary 155-240 mm howitzer and be firing off rounds every 3-5 seconds (wich is still 4 times the burst rate that a battery of these individual guns could do today), not the way they are described 06:34, July 26, 2016 (UTC)Agammamon To answer your final question (years later!) Wulfenbach - Gatling Blasters are not bolt weapons (at least as far as all the fluff descriptions I've seen). They fill the same role as the Megabolter does at their larger scale but they're 'conventional' guns and not bolters. Part of this you can see as bolters have stub barrels (like the megabolter/heavy bolter) while the Gatling Blasters have full-length barrels. 06:39, July 26, 2016 (UTC)Agammamon